Carly Fiorina
Business Leader, Policy Advocate, Political Influencer

While she is perhaps best known as the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), what is not as well known is Carly worked her way through undergraduate and graduate school. A self-made woman, she started her business career as a secretary at a small business and went on to become the first, and to date, the only woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.
 
Carly served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) from 1999 to 2005, leading the reinvention of the legendary company, successfully steering it through the dot-com bust and the worst technology recession in 25 years. Her pursuit of the controversial merger with Compaq Computer positioned HP to become the first $100 billion information technology company. Her record of hard work includes more than 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she led the largest-of-its-time IPO of Lucent and became President of its largest business.

Today, Carly is one of the most recognized business leaders in the world and an opinion leader who champions competitiveness and innovation. She is on the Leadership Council of the Initiative for Global Development and is a founding supporter of the African Leadership Academy. She has also served on the Board of Business Executives for National Security, the Defense Business Board, the CIA’s External Advisory Board and the Advisory Group for Transformational Diplomacy for the Department of State during the Bush Administration. As a cancer survivor who openly tells her story, she is a Global Envoy for Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG organization.

She is politically active and has championed free enterprise, private sector job creation, economic growth and fiscal conservatism. She served as Republican Victory Chair supporting John McCain’s presidential run. She most recently challenged four-term California Senator Barbara Boxer in her own first time political candidacy.

She earned her undergraduate degree from Stanford, an MBA from the University of Maryland and her Masters of Science in Business from MIT. She and her husband Frank live in Los Altos Hills, CA. They have a daughter and two granddaughters.

Rick Reiff
Executive Editor

Rick Reiff is executive editor of the Orange County Business Journal, California's second largest business weekly, and author of its popular "OC Insider" column. He is the host and executive producer of "Inside OC" on PBS SoCal (KOCE-TV), the Los Angeles region’s PBS flagship.

Reiff has received a Pulitzer Prize and a Golden Mike Award, distinguishing him in both print and broadcast journalism.

He was a staff writer with Forbes magazine and a reporter at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, where he was the lead reporter on a team that won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Goodyear's battle with a corporate raider.

Reiff is a native of Chicago and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Rick is married to Mary Ann Brown, executive vice president of Pacific Life Insurance Co. He has a daughter, Jennie Reiff; a son-in-law, OC Fire Authority Capt. Steve Miller; and two Miller grandchildren, Elias and Anna Grace, with a third due in October, 2011.